prologue
If it weren’t for the five-pointed star drawn crudely on the floor in purple marker, it would have appeared to be an ordinary teenage girl slumber party: half-empty bowls of all-dressed chips, a cluster of nail polish in the corner, and teen magazines littering every surface of the room—as well as last year’s eleventh grade yearbook propped open with hearts drawn around one boy’s photo.
Four girls sat cross-legged with the pentagram between them. Vanilla-scented tea lights flickered at each point, along with a small metal bowl in the middle with ingredients for a spell.
“There’s a distinct lack of curses in here,” a girl with pink pyjamas noted as she flipped through the pages of a witchcraft book.
“It’s almost like we’re not supposed to be doing one,” another with braces said, leaning as far away from the pentagram as she could.
A chip sailed across the space and smacked her in the cheek. The thrower tossed her blond hair over her shoulder and said, “She has it coming! That’s what she gets for being a sleaze bag and snatching Chad off the market right before the year-end dance.”
“Right? I mean what is he even doing with her?” Pink Pyjamas tutted.
Braces Girl leaned in conspiratorially. “Weallknow why he’s going out with her.”
“Totally.” Blonde Girl nodded. “I mean, what even happened to her? It’s like she grew boobs over summer and suddenly she’s the most popular girl in school. So annoying.”
“Right? She’s still the same awkward loser she’s always been,” Braces Girl huffed.
“Chad only asked her out because he knows he’ll get laid,” said Pink Pyjamas.
The girls voiced their agreement.
“She totally deserves what’s coming to her,” Pink Pyjamas continued, drawing the girls’ attention back to the book in front of her.
“Okay, so we have everything we need. Now what?” Braces Girl asked.
“I thought you said you’ve cursed someone before?” The blonde turned to the girl in pink.
“My sister does it all the time,” she said. “All you do is draw a pentagram, add some ingredients to the middle along with the person’s hair, chant the spell a few times, and voila.”
“Oh my god, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” Another chip sailed across the space, but Pink Pyjamas was quick, leaning over to catch it in her mouth.
A girl with braids, who’d been quiet until now, peered over at the book. “What if we mix a few of these spells together and come up with our own?”
“You little nerd. Why didn’t I think of that?” Pink Pyjamas smirked.
The girls put their heads together, flipped from page to page, and jotted down various lines in purple gel pen until they were all satisfied with the result.
“This doesn’t sound like a real curse,” said the girl with braids.
“It will work,” the blonde stated. “That is, if we got the key ingredient.”
All eyes turned to the girl with braids, and she gulped. From her pocket she pulled out an envelope, and within it was a single strand of hair.
“Put it in the middle,” Pink Pyjamas instructed.
She hesitated, but did as she was told, setting the strand in the centre of the pentagram along with a few other ingredients they’d procured from their mother’s spice cabinets—sage, bay leaves, and lavender.
“I think we have to hold hands,” said Pink Pyjamas.
Braces frowned. “Where does it say that?”
She shrugged. “In the movies they’re always holding hands.”
“No, in the movies they have a cauldron in the middle and like, eye of newt or some shit,” said the blonde.
“I don’t think holding hands will hurt,” Pink Pyjamas argued. “Isn’t there, like, energy in our bodies?”
